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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Benjamin Disraeli
A bitter cold wind whipped the proud flag around a pole as steely gray as the New Hampshire winter sky. "He can't win," she said on condition of anonymity, "because his big data is nonexistent. Has no ground game. He has no get-out-the-vote operation." As canvassers and candidates trudged through the snow, we chatted in a cozy Manchester diner, anxiously waiting for early primary ...

In the history of the Obama campaign’s storied analytics operation, the effort to model the results live on Election Day, before the votes were tallied, was undoubtedly a low point.
“That was the worst 12 hours of my life,” said David Shor, a senior data scientist at Civis Analytics who was in the “Cave” — the Obama analytics boiler room — on Election Day of 2012. By late morning, some in the Obama team concluded that President Obama was losing Ohio.
This year, Election Day could be the wor...